Articles of Linguistics

African Languages and the Media: The Case of Nigeria Language Policy and the Media

Nigeria is said to have 500 languages and each of these languages has a legal backing as being a national language. In this paper we shall analyse the language policy of Nigeria that protects all indigenous/national languages against death and for usage at appropriate community and levels. In Nigeria languages are tagged as endangered, minority, regional and major. Among them also as part of the policy, some are regarded as languages of wider communication (LWC). There is no state, in a total of 36 plus the Federal Capital Territory that has no more than two languages.Some states may have as many as over ten languages. In fact even some Local Government Areas can have as many as three languages. This linguistic plurality is certainly an enormous task for the government in the dissemination of information using government media channels especially the radio. This paper will discuss on how this scenario has been taken care of in order to avoid deliberate attempt by policy to undermine and silence some languages.In addition, the paper will assess the success or otherwise of the policy. Finally, we shall proffer suggestions as to how to improve on what has been laid down so that our endowed cultural heritage in the form of languages is not left to die because of the challenges of competition since languages are primarily media of communication.